Having fun with science and technology.

Posted: 2008-06-06 06:43

A
paper
(also available
here)
published yesterday in Nature analyzes moving patterns of humans based
on position data provided by a European mobile network operator. While
the paper itself is very interesting and provides new insights it also
raises serious privacy concerns, and maybe even legal troubles for the
telco in question.

Posted: 2009-12-08 19:18

With the economic crisis still being in full effect, Germany wants to
throw government money at another industry giant. However, this time
it is not an ailing car manufacturer, but the software producer
Microsoft. The German Federal Office for Information
Security
(BSI) plans to team up with internet service providers (ISPs) to
establish a call center helping malware-troubled Windows users.

Posted: 2007-08-13 20:07

Last Friday, a new law on computer crime came into effect in
Germany. The newly introduced Section 202c of the German penal code
created much
buzz around
the net since it prohibits the distribution of certain computer
programs assisting in committing data espionage.

Although I think the law is bad and creates an uncanny area of
uncertainty it is not the end of all security research done in
Germany. In fact, much of the current outcry is overblown and
counter-productive, as it contributes to spreading FUD about the
issue.

Posted: 2008-08-04 06:55

The latest thing against phishing are extended validation (EV)
certificates.
Supported by Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7, these certificates
promise that the site has gone through a more extensive validation of
its owner than ordinary SSL certificates. However, when it comes to
market adoption after almost two years availability, these new
certificates have failed badly. Only thirty percent of the world's
largest banks already present an EV certificate in their online
banking application.

Posted: 2006-12-06 10:32

From time to time a vulnerability is found in a virus scanner that
allows an attacker to disguise malicious content so that the scanner
won't detect it but the virus is still fully functional. Much rarer
are discoveries of new attack classes that are able to blindfold not
one but many virus scanners. Here is one. Read more

Copyright 2006--2011 Hendrik Weimer. This document is available under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See
the licensing terms for further details.